Canada election decision unclear for Halifax woman who rotates lawn signs
Jane Davis rotating signs between local Liberal and NDP candidates
A Halifax woman has a creative solution for a conundrum facing thousands of voters across the country — she hasn't decided who to support in the federal election, so she's switching the signs on her lawn every couple of days until she makes a choice.
Jane Davis is rotating her lawn signs between the local Liberal and NDP candidates.
"I'm going to put it right here, so everyone can see it and they're going to say, 'OK, Jane's voting NDP,'" she said.
"But then, two days from now, they're going to see a Liberal sign here and they're going to say, 'What's going on? I thought Jane was voting NDP?'"
Davis says like many in the country, she's torn between parties for the federal election on Oct. 19.
It's still anybody's race. According to a recent Nanos survey, the NDP are at 32.7 per cent, the Liberals at 30.8 per cent and the Conservatives at 26.2 per cent. A month ago, Nanos had the Conservatives five points higher and leading the pack.
One caveat on the Nanos poll is that it was taken in the evenings of Sept. 4, 5 and 6, a long weekend when many Canadians may have been on holiday.
The poll was commissioned by CTV News and the Globe and Mail newspaper and used live agents to phone 1,200 respondents. It has a margin of error of 2.8 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.
'This is my little joke'
"It's a real battle in my mind," said Davis, who added she believes New Democratic Party Leader Tom Mulcair is a "very tough, smart guy" with his "heart in the right place."
"I started to lean NDP and then, after the debate, I was very pleased with how [Liberal Party Leader Justin] Trudeau stood up to them. Still, there wasn't a lot of choice … until Trudeau came up with his deficit spending stimulus program."
Davis is not optimistic about the Conservative Party's chances.
"The Conservatives, for me, are not even a possibility, not even a one out of 1,000 per cent. I wouldn't vote Conservative," she said.
There are four candidates in Davis's Halifax riding. New Democrat Megan Leslie is the incumbent and the Liberals have nominated urban planner Andy Fillmore.
The Conservatives have tapped Irvine Carvery, a former chair of the Halifax Regional School Board who ran for the provincial Progressive Conservatives in Halifax Armdale in 2013. The Greens nominated Thomas Trappenberg, a computer science professor at Dalhousie University.
Davis is leaning toward one candidate, but won't reveal which one. The first sign she put up this week was Leslie's.
"This is my little joke because everybody's going back and forth, back and forth and I just think everyone would get a chuckle over this," she said.